


How We Came To This

by Cherry



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Experiment, Levi's POV, M/M, Moments from their relationship, One sentence fic collection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-29
Updated: 2013-10-29
Packaged: 2017-12-30 19:41:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1022633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cherry/pseuds/Cherry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moments from Levi and Erwin's relationship over the years. Twenty one-sentence mini fics based on a prompt list of one hundred words at<br/>http://kathrineroid.wordpress.com/2011/09/25/100-themes-challenge-writing-prompts.<br/>I used the first twenty words on the list, then changed the order to make the moments roughly chronological.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How We Came To This

**Introduction**

From halfway up the wall, Levi looks down into Erwin Smith’s unavoidable blue eyes and feels fate shoot its anchors into him deeply enough that he thinks the price of pulling free will be the death of at least one of them.

**Complicated**

It’s not as though he’s never killed before – and, no, not only titans – so the fact that Erwin Smith is standing still, open and calm, under the relentless rain and Levi’s hot stare and the cold promise of his blade – surely that should make this easy?

**Making History**

“You seem to have made a promise to yourself, or to your dead friends,” Erwin says, “but I’ve made a promise too, and I’d like you to consider helping me to fulfill it before you kill me: rid the world of titans, and my life is yours to dispose of as you will.”

**Excuses**

Levi sometimes thinks that the main reason he let Erwin live was that he never tried to make any.

**Gateway**

Although he despises them, Levi admits that the politicians who argue in favour of sealing up the gates are right in one respect: the ability to be open always carries the risk of increased vulnerability.

**Judgment**

Where others only condemned, Erwin judged him _useful_ , which was more than anyone had given him before.

**Vengeance**

There was no one moment of epiphany, only a gradual change of heart as his motives lost their relevance in the face of Erwin’s.

**Running Away**

He used to think he was clever, living for himself, keeping out of sight and taking from the fools in the upper city, but he’s learned this much: in a world where hiding is a dead end and running for refuge within the walls is a trap, the only chance of the kind of survival that means anything is to run _towards_.

**33%**

As Erwin enters the office Levi looks up from his calculations, saying calmly, “I’ve worked out that your new operational formation has cut casualties by an average of over a third,” and for once there are no shadows under his eyes, and Erwin smiles, thinking that today his captain looks almost young.

**Dead Wrong**

Levi never forgets what Erwin told him when he became a captain: “Your job as a leader is to make the best decision that you can every time, accepting that, when you’re wrong, people will die – but also that people will often die when you’re right.”

**Opportunities**

Every time the gates open, something in Levi shifts, like wings starting to unfurl.

**Death**

Gaping jaws close on air still moving in Levi’s wake, and, as he decapitates the titan, Levi realizes that only thing that still scares him about the idea of his own death is the dread that it might not happen before Erwin’s.

**Rivalry**

He thinks about this green-eyed boy who, it seems, is humanity’s new best hope, and remembers a time when his own eyes burned that brightly, when he was equally uncontrolled, when the child he was then, before Erwin, would have seen this Eren Jaeger as a rival rather than a duty.

**Obsession**

It’s not actually that he’s obsessed with cleaning at all - rather, he finds that intense focus on such mundane but necessary tasks stops him from dwelling on those things that could too easily become real obsessions: worry over who will fail to return from the next expedition; the pointless revisiting of deaths he can’t forget and decisions he should or shouldn’t have taken; the fact that he can no longer bear to imagine how he would find the strength to keep fighting in a world without Erwin Smith.

**Love**

Although they rarely use the word, they both know it’s as vital as the key hanging around Eren’s neck: the one thing that might save them all from monstrous annihilation.

**Seeking Solace**

If there have been times, after failed missions, or while mourning lost friends, or simply during the waiting moments before sleep, or before dawn, in half-light and behind closed doors – if there have been such times, they leave them resting quiet in those still places, where even Levi is content to allow the slow dust to settle undisturbed.

**Eternity**

Levi has no belief in life after death and has learned to live from day-to-day, without regret, but he thinks he begins to understand the meaning of eternity when he finds himself with only the intermittent stabs of pain in his injured leg to distinguish one minute from the next, waiting in the empty barracks for whatever might remain of the Survey Corps to return.

**Tears**

It’s not what it looks like, you stupid bastard – it’s a fucking dust allergy!

**Unbreakable**

\- like the walls, or the impossibly hard crystal shell Annie has retreated into, or Eren’s resolve, or Mikasa’s, or Erwin fucking Smith even with one arm missing - or his own heart, he tells himself, sweeping sharp china shards of the cup he hurled against the wall into a dustpan, clearing away all evidence of anything so disgustingly brittle.

**My Inspiration**

Erwin is Levi’s, Levi Erwin’s: breathing in, breathing out. 


End file.
